Eric Kraus

collaboration

Book: Works Well With Others


Works Well with Others: Shaking Hands, Shutting Up, and Other Crucial Skills in Business That No One Ever Teaches You

This was another used book store find…

A quick read, packed with tidbits on work politics, getting ahead and staying out of trouble. The book wasn’t based around a single “thing” you have to do to be successful. I think this added to my interest in the book (and wore out my highlighter). Expect a collection of thought-provoking perspectives through the journey/experiences of the author’s career change. Humor, honesty and simple concepts make it a quick and easy read.

Summary: this is another “definitely” on the recommendation list.  A fun book with straight-to-the-point tips for anyone changing careers or expanding their network within the same company.

Here is some of my favorite tips/advice from the book with my own additional take-aways…

 

Appearing/Being Successful

If you don’t screw up when you start, you are over-qualified. If you don’t learn from those mistakes, you are under-qualified.

Be aware of the Imposter Phenomenon: you aren’t as successful as you make others think you are. Everyone is an imposter to some degree. Everyone is weird and nervous too; some are just better at hiding it.

Discretion is a major discipline in an imposter strategy. Talking more will not earn someone’s worth.

Doing work too fast is a bad idea, but doing work too slowly is a terrible idea. Find the balance between preparation/due diligence and delivering on-time. Some times you need to slow down to speed up.  Other times you need to go faster and take risks.

Never ask for credit.  If you want full credit in a business role, find a different career.

 

Presentations

People that are more knowledgeable on subjects make more eye contact. Either learn more about the content or forcefully make more eye contact (ideally the former).

Be genuinely interested in what you are talking about… always.  You can’t fake interest or passion (see point above).

A story must always match an audience’s interest – not your own. Even if the content is yours, match the story to your audience.

Everyone in an audience starts out a presentation wanting to be inspired. They want you to succeed. Don’t take this as pressure, take it as comfort.

Nobody misses what was never there. Don’t over plan speeches, etc. Audiences don’t know your script. Know your topics, and talk naturally about them. When you try to memorize a script, you risk missing a part and throwing yourself off.

Passion is great, but too much passion is unprofessional. You sometimes benefit from undercutting (self-deprecating) your passion with reality. You don’t have to insult others or self-deprecate to build rapport – this is a sign of insecurity. Just stick with respectful reality.

 

Living with Time

Time itself can’t be managed. It can only be acknowledge or ignored. Time operates on it’s own. You live within it.

NEVER explain why you are late. People that make excuses do it because of habit. Don’t allow yourself to build a habit. Apologize (sincerely) and move on.

If you WANT to be on-time, you WILL be on-time. If it’s a must thing, nothing could be an excuse.  Late to your wedding?  Late to claim your lottery winnings?  An excuse acknowledges the level of importance you give…that’s why never explain why you are late.

 

Collaboration and Communication

A collaboration consists of two or more people better off together.

Every good collaboration starts with an admittance of strength(s) and weakness(es).

You want to work with someone smart, but not knowing the SAME things as you. You want some good tension.

Find someone not afraid to step on toes, but an excellent communicator. Communication is the key to getting to good work sooner.

Emails should be aggressive and clear. Concise without ambiguity.  Emails should not be a dumping ground for “diarrhea of the mind”.  State points and questions clearly and easy to read/understand.

Every time you write an email, think “How would Robert DeNiro write it?”

Never start a sentence with “Well…”   Never end with “thoughts”?

 

Politics and Conflict

If you’re struggling with a co-worker, find out, first, if they are purposefully out to get you. Maybe they don’t know? If they don’t know, be honest with simple facts on the issue.

Taking the high road is too safe, taking the low road is a sh*t show. Take the reality road: “this is how it is” road can be magical.

NEVER kill with kindness – it’s passive aggressive. Never fight. A battle can only happen when someone gets to win.  Even if you never get an answer, you will have demonstrated, “I see it” and that should earn you respect.

Always keep score in meetings.  Know who is talking, who takes notes, who interrupts, who never speaks, etc. Constantly ask yourself why for each of those roles.  Always question observations from hidden politics.

 

Ask Stupid Questions…Please!

The local Microsoft Technology Center has a mantra of “No guessing”…and I love it. All engagements start out with a level-set that in order for the effort to be successful, all assumptions must be validated and no concerns left unaddressed. I have really enjoyed this collaborative ‘mandate’. There is a level of efficiency AND effectiveness that comes with the removal of all the usual barriers.

However, this level productivity maturity only comes when people talk. “No guessing” is a theme that manifests itself through full transparency (and that means everyone). This means people need to speak up when they have doubts and when they disagree. And yes, as you can imagine, great listening skills are still valued, and needed.

I recently read a fascinating quote by Abraham Lincoln via a blog post by Simon Terry:

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

– Abraham Lincoln

Unfortunately, many of us belong to a culture that still feels they cannot be seen as vulnerable. I see it every day…and I’m admitting…I fall victim too. We lie, exaggerate and cheat ourselves by making it appear as if we’ve got everything under control and aligned to a solid vision. In reality, we could all use some type of help. And especially when we are part of a team…ego is the antithesis to team.

Those people who ask questions and never let doubts or concerns fester often end up helping the entire team move forward faster toward its goals.

30 Days with Office Online

Here’s a account of a 30 day experiment I did using only Office Online.  For clarification, I will refer to the Office installed locally as (desktop) and Office products in the browser from Office 365 as (online).

Rules of the Experiment

Parameters of the experiment were pretty simple: unless jeopardizing my job or customer, I was only going to use Office (online) – no Office (desktop).  This means I authored, edited, shared and presented content all from Office 365.

Read More …

30 Days with Office 365 – Week 2 – Chromebook

For week 2, I’m working off of a Samsung Chromebook.

 

Let’s Get Right To It

Lync is a core tool for daily communication and collaboration.

My experimentation last week had a caveat with Lync; however, this week (on Chromebook) there’s no hiding behind the fact that Lync (desktop) app is critical to get work done.

  • Instant Message – OK – IMs come in as notifications in the top of the page.  After accepting an IM, it opens a new window in IE.  If you IM with a lot of people concurrently, it could be easy to lose the IM windows.  In Chrome, it’s a similar issue except for the fact that you can convert a window into a tab, so you can ‘collect’ them as tabs in a single window.  It helps a little, but still a pain for both platforms.  I would definitely prefer Lync (desktop) or Lync (modern) app on Windows.  If neither of those, I would want IE or Chrome WITH the browser plugin.
  • People Search – GREAT – The people search in “Outlook” or “People” apps of Office 365 return results insanely fast.  From there I can easily IM, email or schedule a meeting with someone.  Because this is so fast, it is one of the big reasons I prefer the browser experience over desktop
  • Conferencing – GOOD – I can join conferences via the browser with excellent feature parity.  On Windows, I can install the browser plugin and desktop share, join the Lync call (voice), etc.  With Chromebook, I’m definitely sunk.  Without the ability to install the plugin, I can’t desktop share or join the voice call.  I have to use my cell phone for this.
  • Desktop Share – BAD – non-existent without browser plugin or Lync on Windows.

Summary

  • Without Lync (desktop) installed…I felt hinder.  The browser would be good enough for a quick IM on the go…but not for full day of communication.
  • Notetaking was nearly seamless in the browser.  I am a huge handwritten note taker…which I missed.  If I don’t mind opening a laptop for every meeting, I can type my notes just fine.
  • Email and Yammer were the best and most seamless experience.  The only challenge I had was the lack of local storage.  Some times I would need to save a file locally to upload to another location (more on next line).
  • My biggest concern was the lack of local storage.  Yes, Google Drive was there…but all of the documents placed there would be indexed.  Regardless of the fact that people call it my “personal index” that is data crawled and stored…and give the sensitive of the content I work with…it’s not a viable option for me.
  • For the most part, Word, Excel and PowerPoint worked for my needs (creating, editing in the browser).  I had one proposal that needed some fine tune adjustments.  For that, I had to fall back on my Surface.  It was a 5% case.

30 Days with Office 365 – Day 1

I’m kicking off 30 Days with Office 365 experiment with a Day 1 post on my Outlook experience today.  Being one of the more critical tools of my work day, I thought I’d start here and see how it goes.  I definitely wasn’t new to OWA (Outlook Web Access), and felt fairly confident I would be ok for awhile working via the browser.

Outlook

Pros

Login/Launch – I found the initial login/launch incredibly quick. The web page was responsive and I was in to my Inbox in seconds.

Touch Mode – On first login, the website asks me if I want to switch to desktop mode (instead of touch mode), and kindly asks me if I want to remember this setting.  Since I’m on a touch-enabled laptop, I decided to stick with desktop mode for the first day.

Creating/Replying/Deleting – Creating a new message and replying were fast as expected.  Same as with Outlook 2013, if I navigated away from a message (new or reply) a draft would be saved for me automatically.

Moving Messages – No issues moving messages into other folders.  Right-click exposed a context menu just like in Outlook 2013 and drag-and-drop worked as well.

Cons

 

Browser Tab – There wasn’t an easy way to open a second tab for things.  A fairly easy work-around, I simply created a second tab and navigated to the Calendar.

Threading – Every once and a while, this still throws me off.  Threading works as expected, but if you fork a message, the threading does not portray this like it does in Outlook 2013.  It just shows the messages in chronological order, which can give the impression that they were replies of one another, when in fact they just share the same subject.  There are some dots to the left of the threads, but without an authoritative answer, I’m only guess what they mean.

Signature – I am also missing the ability to store multiple signatures, but this is very minor and hasn’t been an issue for me.

Multiple Email – Since I’m in the context of one user account, I don’t have the ability to view/send email from multiple accounts like I would in Outlook 2013.  Easy work around was to have another tab open for my personal accounts.  I didn’t actually do this method, and found myself using my phone more for this scenario.

Calendar

Pros

Meeting Preview – With that out of the way, the Calendar functionality really is good.  The single click preview is awesome.

Meeting Preview

Single Pane – The general ability to do almost everything in a single window is really productive.

 

Cons

Personal Calendar – The biggest downfall for me was the inability to overlay personal calendars.  I have several calendars that I use and having multiple windows open for them is a bit of a hassle.  However, this won’t be the case with everyone and my phone still does an excellent job of aggregating appointments so I can see free/busy across all of them.

People

I will cover the “People” update under the Lync overview, Day 5

Tasks

Pros

Task Lists – Like Outlook 2013, Tasks are shown from Exchange, but can also be linked from SharePoint Online.  With that, the same great “merged” view of different task lists

Message Followup – I rely on Tasks a lot for following up on email requests and a simple right click allows me to set a follow up flag for emails.

Email Followup

 

Cons

I really couldn’t find any thing that didn’t work.

Search

The email search works as good as Outlook 2013.  However, the filters aren’t easily identifiable.  Here is a list of the filters that work:

From Searches the From field.
To Searches the To field.
Cc Searches the Cc field.
Bcc Searches the Bcc field.
Participants Searches the To, Cc, and Bcc fields.
Subject Searches the subject.
Body or Content Searches the message body.
Sent Searches the date sent. You can search for a specific date or a range of dates separated by two dots (..). You can also search for relative dates: Today, tomorrow, yesterday, this week, next month, last week, past month. You can search for the day of the week or month of the year.
Received Searches for the date received. You can use the same search terms as for Sent.
Category Searches the Category field.
Attachment Searches for the specified attachment by title. For example, attachment:letter.doc will find any message with an attachment named letter.doc.
Has Use has:flag to find items that are flagged.Use has:attachment to find items that have one or more attachments.

 

Touch Mode

I found Touch Mode great for tablet like scenarios (triaging email, quick responses, managing calendar, etc).  Though, I did have a little bit of trouble initially finding the option to switch back to desktop mode.

Touch Mode On Touch Mode Off
Touch Mode On  Touch Mode Off

Summary

All in all – it was a seamless transition for the day.  No challenges navigating or working with the Outlook in the browser.  I definitely did not experience any productivity loss, which was most important.  I don’t think I would have any issues converting over to Outlook (online) long-term, especially with the anticipated release of Office 365 Groups, which will integrate with Yammer.

Follow this on Storify: http://storify.com/erickraus/30-days-with-office-365

 

SharePoint Conference 2014 – Enterprise Social Sessions

I’m completely plagiarizing this from Christophe Fiessinger…stealing from an internal Yammer post.

Here is a list of Enterprise Social sessions from the recent SharePoint Conference.  See other posts on content from SPC2014:  Day 1  |  Day 2  |  Day 3  |  All Session Recordings (Channel 9)

Product 

Journey/Adoption

Developer

Executive track

Customers

SharePoint Conference 2014 – Day 3

Day 1  |  Day 2  |  Day 3  |  Enterprise Social Sessions (recorded)  |  All Session Recordings (Channel 9)

 

Cloud Productivity

Menchie’s productivity case study

  • Outdated and Unreliable IT Tools
  • Unified Cloud-Based Productivity Tools
  • Mobile Productivity
  • Reduced Costs
  • Streamlined IT Administration
  • A Platform for Growth

 

Yammer

Success Center – for training, case studies, guidance for planning your enterprise social journey

Microsoft + Yammer: Transforming by Working Social

InfoPath Update

http://blogs.office.com/2014/01/31/update-on-infopath-and-sharepoint-forms/

{more to come}

 

Project

Sharing and Collaborating in Project 2013 – free webcast

SharePoint Conference 2014 – Day 2

Day 1  |  Day 2  |  Day 3  |  Enterprise Social Sessions (recorded)  |  All Session Recordings (Channel 9)

More great news out of SharePoint Conference today.  Here are a few highlights.

OneDrive for Business

OneDrive for Business Standalone Subscription

  • 25GB of Storage (option to purchase more)
  • Offline Sync
  • Multi-platform
  • Enterprise-Ready Administration
  • Promotional pricing: $2.50 per user per month in all licensing agreements/programs (50% discount) through September 2014
  • For customers with Office with SA or Office 365 ProPlus: $1.50 per user per month; agreement types included: Open, Enterprise Agreement, and MPSA.

Skype

Skype is Now Available in HD for Outlook.com Customer

 

Office for Developers

 

InfoPath (Office Forms Future)

Office Forms vNext Feedback Survey

  • Feedback on vision for Office Forms
  • InfoPath will be supported until April 2023

 

Watch keynotes/SPC TV

Channel 9 – SharePoint Conference 2014 TV

 

SharePoint Conference 2014 – Day 1

Day 1  |  Day 2  |  Day 3  |  Enterprise Social Sessions (recorded)  |  All Session Recordings (Channel 9)

Attempting to summarize all of the great content being distributed at SharePoint Conference 2014 (#SPC14) would be nearly impossible.  However, here’s a list of the top links being shared across my Yammer/Twitter feeds.

 

Office / Office 365

Technology is Enabling New Ways of Working

Work Like a Network! Enterprise Social and the Future of Work

  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM / Yammer Enhancements
  • Yammer Enterprise with all Office 365 Enterprise plans
  • Office Graph – email, social conversations, documents, sites, instant messages, meetings map the relationships between people and things that make business go
  • Groups Experience – Yammer feed and inbox will both display the same conversation, so users who are more comfortable in Yammer can participate in the group through the feed, and users who prefer email can participate in the group through the inbox
  • Inline Social Experiences – weaving social into the apps that matter most by creating Inline Social Experiences in Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics, and any other app, service, or line-of-business system that is important to business

OneDrive for Business – cloud file storage and sharing just got easier

SharePoint Server 2013 Service Pack 1 now available

New Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2013

 

Social

If you’re not following the #responsiveorg movement by now, it’s time to hop on the wagon.

Another awesome effort to follow is #_Unbound.  It’s a all about working out loud and being social.  The brain is @matthewpartovi   You can read more here.

 

 

Oh…and InfoPath is dead…but not unsupported.  More coming this week.